Three companies. One job each time: build the demand engine.

The situation. Kimble Digital runs on judgement about what makes a small company look bigger than it is, and about which half of a plan to bin. That judgement was formed in three recruitment technology businesses, twice as the first marketer through the door.

What was wrong, every time. A good product and no way for the market to find it. Broadbean was a job-advert distribution tool sold by founders to their contacts. Ebsta was a UK consulting business with 35 customers and a Salesforce plugin. cube19 had an analytics platform, a marketing function that was not working, and a pandemic arriving in its second year.

Broadbean, 2003–2012. First marketer at the company. £0 to £7.2m ARR. 100% growth five years running. UK market leader to international brand across the US and Australia. Acquired by the Daily Mail Group in 2009. Then a move into DMGT’s digital management team, running a £600k/month PPC budget.

One asset from that era is still working. The Boolean guide, built at Broadbean with Glen Cathey around twenty years ago, is still on Broadbean’s site and still being downloaded. It was never just a PDF. An email campaign drove registrations to a live webinar with Cathey, the recording became an on-demand asset, the guide sat behind the form, and the link went into every email signature in the company. Hundreds of leads at the time, and two decades of downloads since, without anybody touching it.

Ebsta, 2012–2018. First marketing hire at a bootstrapped startup. 35 to 18,000 customers. £300k to £3.4m ARR. 38,000 free trial signups through AppExchange growth mechanics. The fastest-growing app in the Salesforce ecosystem in 2015.

cube19, 2018–2022. Started fractional, replaced the incumbent, rebuilt global marketing and inside sales. £1.7m to £3.6m ARR. £650k of net new ARR generated during Covid. Positioned as the number one analytics platform for staffing firms across the UK, US and Australia. Acquired by Bullhorn, 9 November 2021.

The bit that needs saying. All three were eventually acquired, and the headline numbers are not all mine to claim. Broadbean went DMGT → CareerBuilder → Veritone for $52m in cash, closed 14 June 2023, eleven years after I left. Ebsta was acquired by Fullcast on 28 August 2025, seven years after I left. cube19 went to Bullhorn while I was running its marketing, as Broadbean went to the Daily Mail Group in 2009 while I was running its. Discount the first two if you want to. The method is identical in all three, and every date on this page is public.